Reverse Martingale Betting System

The Reverse Martingale is progressive betting system that can be used when playing the game of roulette. As you can tell from the name it is based around the Martingale betting system, which is a high-risk, low-reward method of grinding out wins at the casino in which the bettor doubles his bet after every loss. The other thing you can glean from the name is that this system is the opposite of the Martingale betting system, in the same way that the Contra D’Alembert is the opposite of the D’Alembert betting system. As the Reverse Martingale betting system is the opposite of the Martingale betting system, it is low-risk, high-reward, in theory, as the rules of the system dictate that the bettor doubles their bet when they win and continues doing so until they either stop, or they hit the end of their progression. It’s worth noting that the Reverse Martingale is also referred to as the Anti-Martingale betting system; different title, same betting system.

As with all betting systems, you should use it with a bankroll fully established. Do not go to the table with all your money, it is a recipe for disaster. Instead, you should go to the table with an amount you are happy to lose – so not an amount that will cause you to miss a mortgage payment should your time at the table not be successful, and definitely not an amount that will leave you with nothing in your bank. Even if you have a stash of money reserved for betting that you won’t miss, never take it all to the table, just so you can live to fight another day.

Once you have decided on an amount to take to the table, when using the Reverse Martingale betting system, you have to decide on how much you are willing to stake. Your initial stake should be, at the most, one hundredth of your bankroll. So, if you take $100 to the table, your initial bet would be, at the most, $1. This is called ‘one unit’. If you want to make your bankroll last even longer, you can split it into smaller stakes, but one hundredth is usually the standard when it comes to betting strategies such as the Reverse Martingale. In this article, we will play with a bankroll of $1,000, which means one unit will be $10.

The next stage in planning for the Reverse Martingale is to decide how much you want to win on each progression. It is important to decide this, as you have to know when to stop when you are on a winning run – if you do not decide this, you will undoubtedly become greedy, thinking you cannot lose the next bet and you will, at some point, lose the next bet. You may decide that after every three wins you cash out, you might like to push your luck and cash out after every five, or you might not be happy until you land ten winning bets. Whatever you decide, stick to it. For the sake of the article, we will go with three wins in a row.

Now, as with the Martingale betting system, the Reverse Martingale betting system works best with even money bets on roulette – odd/even, or red/black. For our example, we will go with betting on red with every spin. You can shift your bets around from odd to red, from red to black and so on, but you should stick to the even money bets to keep things simple.

Once everything is in place, the last thing to do is place your bet.

As stated at the start of the article, if your bet wins, you double your initial bet. So, your $1/$10/$100 stake becomes $2/$20/$200. This continues until you lose or you hit your desired target. If you lose, the progression simply starts from the beginning, and you have lost one unit from your bankroll. If you had been using the Martingale betting system, your losing bet would become $2/$20/$200 and if you lost again it would become $4/$40/$400 so you can see that you are minimizing your loses using the Reverse Martingale betting system.

Let us say that our first bet won with an initial stake of $10, so we now bet two units ($20). We will stick to the even money bet, but shift it from betting on red to betting on odd numbers. Again, we win, so using the rules of the system, we double our bet. If we had lost, while it would have been a theoretical $20 loss, our bankroll is only hit for $10.

So now we are up to wagering four units ($40) and we will keep it on odd. Again, the bet wins and the croupier sends $80 our way. We have no hit our three wins in a row, so our progression ends. We bank the $80 and our bankroll sits at a healthy $1,080. If we had been using the Martingale betting system, our three wins in a row would have won us $30, so you can see why the preference is to use the Reverse Martingale betting system when playing even money chances at roulette.

Like all betting systems, there is no guarantee that you are going to make a profit. It is designed purely to help maximize any winning streaks you happen to go on, and minimize any losses should the table go cold on you. Just remember to stick to your original plan, never deviate and never get greedy – the rules are there for a reason.

PlayRoulette.org » Strategy » Reverse Martingale Betting System